Learning Zone The Plantagenets


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I'm Professor Robert Bartlett

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and this is the story of the Plantagenets.

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They were England's longest ruling dynasty,

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producing 15 of the nation's most famous - and infamous - kings.

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Their story is one of intrigue, conflict and brutality.

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But also the establishment of England's system of justice.

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And the birth of Parliament.

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They conquered Wales and tried to claim Scotland.

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Their great castles hammered home their power.

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The future of the British Isles

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was shaped by this one extraordinary family.

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The story of England's longest reigning dynasty begins

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here in Anjou, Western France.

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In 1128, an enraged princess arrived here.

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Her name was Matilda and she was the only surviving legitimate

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child of King Henry I of England, and his acknowledged heir.

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Her father had commanded her to marry a 15-year-old boy,

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Geoffrey, the eldest son of the Count of Anjou.

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King Henry hoped the arranged marriage at Le Mans Cathedral

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would produce a male heir, who would ultimately become

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Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and King of England.

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Things didn't go according to plan.

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Both Geoffrey and Matilda were proud and quarrelsome people,

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and after a tumultuous year, they separated.

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But this was, above all, a political union

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and a reconciliation was soon imposed.

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Matilda rejoined her teenage husband and performed her royal duty -

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giving him three sons in three years.

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This ended any doubts about the succession

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and also laid the foundations of a powerful new dynasty.

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Geoffrey was an energetic, intelligent man

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with golden-red hair.

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He also had a nickname, that comes from the Latin for the broom plant -

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planta genista - Plantagenet.

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No-one knows for certain why Geoffrey was called Plantagenet.

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One theory is that it's because he wore

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a sprig of the plant in his hat.

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But, in any case, for over 300 years

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none of his descendants bore the name.

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Kings don't need surnames.

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But it's proved a useful label for historians to describe that

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long line of monarchs who descended from Matilda

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and the young Geoffrey of Anjou.

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King Henry I had named Matilda his heir.

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But when he died in 1135,

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the English throne was seized by Matilda's cousin, Stephen.

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The Plantagenets fought back.

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Geoffrey led a successful invasion of Normandy,

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which had been part of Henry I's dominions,

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while Matilda crossed the Channel to claim her crown.

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This started almost two decades of civil war.

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Government virtually collapsed and England descended

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into a period of bloody conflict often called simply The Anarchy.

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Geoffrey and Matilda's eldest son, Henry, inherited his parent's claim

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to the English throne and much of Northern France.

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As a young man, he was granted Normandy.

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Later, he inherited Anjou.

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Then by marrying the greatest heiress in Europe,

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Eleanor of Aquitaine,

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he took control of one of the most powerful duchies in France.

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Henry now set his sights on winning the greatest prize of all...

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..the English crown.

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Crossing the Channel with a small army, Henry found England

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devastated by nearly two decades of civil war between

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Stephen and Matilda's supporters.

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His arrival persuaded many barons to join the Plantagenet cause.

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Henry's and Stephen's armies confronted one another

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here at Wallingford Castle.

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A contemporary chronicle,

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the Gesta Stephani, describes what happened next.

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"It was a terrible thing to see so many armed men with drawn swords,

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"ready to kill their relatives and fellow countrymen.

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"And so the chief men on each side shrank in horror from civil war

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"and the destruction of their kingdom."

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Because the two armies refused to fight,

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Stephen and Henry were forced to talk.

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According to the chronicles,

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they met outside the castle, one on either side of the stream.

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Eventually they came to an agreement -

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King Stephen would continue to rule

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but he recognised Henry as his lawful heir.

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The very next year, Stephen was seized by

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"a terrible pain in the gut and a flow of blood."

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The king was dead.

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The negotiations that began here would lead to more than

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three centuries of Plantagenet rule in England.

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On the 19th December 1154,

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Henry II became the first Plantagenet king of England.

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This French-speaking monarch now ruled a vast empire that

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stretched from the Scottish borders to the Pyrenees.

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But keeping hold of it would involve intrigue,

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murder and bloody warfare.

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King Richard the Lionheart had survived ten violent years

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on the throne, but his luck ran out in France in the spring of 1199.

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While laying siege to the castle of a rebellious baron in his home

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duchy of Aquitaine, Richard was killed by a crossbow bolt.

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His brother John was now the only surviving son

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of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor, and quickly secured his coronation.

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But John's teenage nephew, Arthur, also had a claim to the crown,

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and was supported by the King of France.

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In 1202, despite his youth, Arthur led an army into Anjou,

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hoping to capture Eleanor.

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John rushed there to free her,

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and it was Arthur who was taken prisoner.

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No-one is certain what happened to Arthur after that,

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but a contemporary chronicler claims that Arthur's own jailor

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told him of the boy's fate.

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According to him, John at first kept his 16-year-old nephew a prisoner.

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But then one night, after dinner, when John was drunk and full of

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the devil, he went to Arthur's cell and killed him with his own hands,

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then tied a huge stone around the corpse

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and tossed it into the River Seine.

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King Philip of France refused to make peace with John

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until Arthur was handed over alive.

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He probably knew this was impossible.

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One by one, Philip conquered John's French domains.

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Soon all that remained of his continental empire was Gascony.

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With France lost,

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John was determined to tighten his grip on England.

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He dispossessed barons who opposed him,

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and exploited his royal powers to accumulate vast personal wealth.

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John also resented Rome's power in his realm,

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and in 1206 he refused to accept the Pope's latest choice of archbishop.

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In retaliation, the Pope deployed his most fearsome weapon -

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the Kingdom of England was placed under an interdict.

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This meant that all church services in England were suspended.

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The churches and cathedrals stood empty.

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No baptisms or marriages could take place in church.

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The dead could not be buried in churchyards.

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No church bells were heard in England.

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And this lasted six years.

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For believers in a so-called Age of Faith,

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this must have been deeply disturbing.

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But it made John rich.

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Because he hit back by confiscating the clergy's lands and possessions.

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The king and the Pope eventually came to terms.

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John would accept the Pope's nominee as archbishop

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but he would keep all the money that he'd squeezed out of the church.

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But John wanted even more money,

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to fund an army to win back the territories he had lost in France.

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His barons were not enthusiastic, so John began to bleed them dry,

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extracting what he needed through draconian taxes

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and exploitation of the royal courts.

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He didn't trust his barons,

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making them hand over family members as hostages.

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When one of his nobles, William de Braose, prepared to give up

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his sons, his wife remembered how the king had treated his own nephew.

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William de Braose was the baron who had served as Arthur's jailor.

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His wife shouted at him, "I will not hand over my boys to your lord,

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"King John, because he foully murdered his nephew Arthur,

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"when he should have kept him in honourable captivity."

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The king's reaction was savage.

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De Braose managed to escape to France,

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but John captured his wife and son and imprisoned them.

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He commanded that their food be stopped.

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After 11 days, they were found starved to death.

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The son's cheeks had been eaten away by his ravenous mother.

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Plantagenet cruelty had sunk to new depths.

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John's invasion of France failed.

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And in May 1215, many English barons renounced their allegiance to him

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and occupied London.

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They demanded a settlement

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liberating the nobility from absolute royal power.

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In desperation, John agreed to accept the demands they made.

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The agreement was issued in a charter sealed at Runnymede.

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Magna Carta - the Great Charter - is one of the most famous

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documents in English history.

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Some of its clauses seem quite mundane,

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like the one fixing the level of death duties,

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but this was a royal power that John had exploited for financial gain.

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Other clauses have a more ringing tone.

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"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned except

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"by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.

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"To no-one will we sell,

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"to no-one deny or delay right and justice."

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All the clauses are based on the idea that there is a right way

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of doing things - enshrined in Magna Carta as the law of the land.

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And the most important thing was that it bound both king and subject.

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Plantagenet dynastic ambition had provoked a new settlement

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between the monarchs and those they ruled.

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Henry III was nine years old

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when he became the fourth Plantagenet king to rule England.

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The French dynasty had dominated England and much of France

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for 60 years.

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But Henry's father, King John, had lost most of

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the family's continental lands to the French king.

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Henry grew up to be a pious ruler, devoted to pilgrimage and prayer.

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But like his ancestors, Henry was determined to expand his empire.

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Henry wasn't a warrior king.

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But he could use the revenues of England to add

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to the Plantagenet dominions.

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The Pope was inviting Henry

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to purchase the rights to the Kingdom of Sicily.

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And he couldn't refuse the chance to add to the family's lands.

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He accepted, on behalf of his younger son, Edmund.

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The only snag was the price tag.

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Henry agreed to pay the Pope three times his annual income

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for the chance to secure Sicily for his son.

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This huge expenditure put his own family's interests

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above those of his powerful barons,

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and a group of them decided the king had to be constrained.

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Things came to a head one April morning in 1258.

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Seven barons in full armour confronted Henry

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here in Westminster Hall. The king was startled.

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"What is this, my lords? Am I your captive?"

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They reassured him that they were not rebels,

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but friends of the Crown.

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Nevertheless, the barons had demands,

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and the king was forced to submit to them.

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This triggered a chain of reforming legislation that transformed

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the way England was governed.

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The reforms would be agreed by a committee of 24 -

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12 chosen by the king, 12 by the barons.

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For the first time in English history,

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the king would share his power with a council.

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These historic reforms are known as the Provisions of Oxford.

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Medieval kings had always claimed to rule by the grace of God, but

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Henry now reluctantly swore an oath to share power with the barons in

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the name of Le Commun de Engleterre - the community of England.

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Provoked by Plantagenet extravagance,

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the Provisions of Oxford mark an important moment

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in the history of England, and of the limitation of royal power.

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For 20 years, the assemblies where the king consulted

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with his bishops and barons had been known by a term

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derived from the French - "parley", to talk.

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This gave us the name of a new institution - Parliament.

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Henry appealed to the Pope to annul the Provisions of Oxford.

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But this provoked his own brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort,

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to raise an army from his base here at Kenilworth Castle.

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He confronted the king's forces outside Lewes in Sussex.

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De Montfort's men were outnumbered.

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But they inflicted a humiliating defeat on Henry,

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and took his son and heir, Prince Edward, prisoner.

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Henry remained king in name only.

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For the next 15 months, England was ruled by Simon de Montfort.

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And he did so through Parliament.

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De Montfort's Parliament of 1265 is often

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regarded as the forerunner of the modern Parliament.

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As always, it included barons and bishops -

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who sit nowadays as the House of Lords.

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But for the first time,

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knights and burgesses were sent from the shires and from the boroughs,

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elected to Parliament by the property owners of England.

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Parliament now had the beginnings of a second house -

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later to be known as the Commons.

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Henry III seemed to be a spent force.

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But his son Edward escaped captivity.

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He raised an army and confronted de Montfort.

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At the battle of Evesham,

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Edward reasserted Plantagenet rule in England.

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De Montfort's supporters were slaughtered,

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and de Montfort himself killed in the battle.

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De Montfort's rule was over. But the English Parliament lived on.

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And future Plantagenet kings would ignore it at their peril.

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Plantagenet kings always looked to expand their territories

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beyond England.

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And Edward I was determined to spread his control

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across the British Isles.

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Wales had troubled the Plantagenet kings for generations.

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Its rugged terrain made it hard to conquer and control.

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And they regarded its inhabitants as little more than barbarians.

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But Edward I was a man who never gave up what he saw as his rights.

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And these included, in his eyes, overlordship of Wales.

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But the Princes of Gwynedd, Llewelyn and his younger brother Dafydd,

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stood in his way.

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Their family had ruled here for centuries.

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Edward's father, Henry III,

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had recognised Llewelyn as Prince of Wales, as long as he paid homage.

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But when Edward took the throne, Llewelyn refused.

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Edward declared Llewelyn a "rebel and disturber of the peace"

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and in 1277 set off westwards from Chester

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at the head of a powerful army of 800 knights,

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crossbowmen from Gascony and 16,000 infantry.

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Edward's army captured Anglesey, the breadbasket of Wales.

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At a stroke, this provided food for his own men

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and cut off supplies to the Welsh.

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Llewelyn had no choice but to surrender and pay homage after all.

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An uneasy truce followed.

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But it was broken when Dafydd ap Gruffydd

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led a new rebellion against English rule.

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For over a year, Edward's army clashed with Welsh defenders.

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But in 1282, disaster struck for the Welsh dynasty.

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Llewelyn was killed in battle.

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Dafydd ap Gruffydd held out here at Dolbadarn Castle

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for a few months more.

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Finally, he was captured and tried by the English.

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Wales was now a Plantagenet dominion.

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Dafydd was executed, and to further stamp his authority,

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Edward built and repaired a chain of castles across Wales.

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These fortresses represent the peak of medieval castle-building.

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It looked at one point as though Scotland would go

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the way of Wales, swallowed up by the English kingdom.

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When King Alexander III of Scotland died in 1286, he left no son.

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The dead king's three-year-old granddaughter,

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Margaret of Norway, was next in line to the throne.

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Edward decided that Margaret should marry his own young son.

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The situation would be resolved by diplomacy and marriage, not by war.

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And Britain would be united under the Plantagenets.

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It remains one of the great "what ifs" of British history.

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No marriage took place.

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Little Margaret died in Orkney, on her way to Scotland.

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And with her died Edward's plan

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for a bloodless Plantagenet take-over of Scotland.

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After the death of Margaret, Edward agreed to tolerate

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a subordinate king in Scotland - John Balliol.

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But as soon as he showed signs of independence...

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..Edward's troops attacked Berwick and slaughtered its inhabitants.

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After defeating a Scottish army at Dunbar, English garrisons

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and officials were installed across Scotland.

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But resistance to English rule grew, led by William Wallace.

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Wallace was a proud and charismatic figure

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who refused to pay homage to Edward.

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To crush Wallace,

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the English army had to cross the River Forth at Stirling.

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At this time, the bridge here was just wide enough

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for the English forces to cross two abreast.

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Once half the army had crossed,

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the Scots swooped down and cut off the bridge.

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SHOUTS, SWORDS CLANK

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The English stranded on the northern bank were surrounded.

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The result was slaughter.

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Around 5,000 English infantrymen died at Stirling Bridge.

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The battle didn't decide the issue,

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but Wallace's defiance shook Edward I.

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The conquest of Scotland remained his obsession.

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The king was riding to confront another Scottish leader,

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Robert Bruce, when he died in 1307.

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Plantagenet determination to subdue Scotland was undiminished.

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But Edward II's defeat by Robert Bruce at Bannockburn,

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seven years later, set the limits to Plantagenet

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ambitions in Britain - they would never conquer the Scots.

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And they provoked a deepening of Scottish national pride,

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and a sense of independence that survives to this day.

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Henry VI was a simple, pious king, and no warrior.

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He lost all the territories in France his father, Henry V,

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had conquered.

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He also suffered from mental illness, which made him vulnerable.

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By 1453, he was incapable of ruling.

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Waiting in the wings was a cousin who thought

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he had a claim to the throne just as good as Henry VI and his young son.

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Richard, Duke of York argued he had a greater right to the crown

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because Henry VI's grandfather, Henry of Lancaster,

0:24:090:24:13

had seized the throne illegally.

0:24:130:24:15

But Henry's wife, Margaret,

0:24:160:24:19

struggled ferociously to maintain her son's right to succeed.

0:24:190:24:23

The Houses of York and Lancaster were on a collision course.

0:24:250:24:29

The nobility was forced to take sides,

0:24:310:24:34

many members of the leading families were killed

0:24:340:24:37

and the power struggle became ever more bitter, bloody and vengeful.

0:24:370:24:41

War raged across England, and after five years

0:24:430:24:47

the Yorkists were gaining the upper hand.

0:24:470:24:51

But then, disaster.

0:24:510:24:53

In 1460, Richard, Duke of York

0:24:560:24:58

himself was killed in battle at Wakefield,

0:24:580:25:01

his head cut off and displayed on the walls of York,

0:25:010:25:04

wearing a paper crown - the only crown he ever wore.

0:25:040:25:08

But the Yorkist torch was taken up by his son, Edward.

0:25:080:25:11

Aged just 18, tall and handsome,

0:25:110:25:14

he would prove to be a formidable warrior.

0:25:140:25:17

After the Battle of Wakefield, he seized control of London,

0:25:170:25:20

and had himself proclaimed king.

0:25:200:25:22

The battle to determine which Plantagenet was the rightful king

0:25:240:25:28

took place here at Towton in Yorkshire.

0:25:280:25:31

In heavy snow,

0:25:340:25:36

this would be the bloodiest battle ever on English soil.

0:25:360:25:39

The fighting lasted all day, the turning point coming as dusk fell.

0:25:410:25:48

Yorkist reinforcements arrived and attacked the Lancastrian flank.

0:25:500:25:55

The Lancastrians were pushed back

0:25:550:25:58

and began to fall down the hill, panic-stricken.

0:25:580:26:01

As they tumbled down the slope, they found that they had to cross

0:26:030:26:07

the river that runs at the foot of the hill, through the woods.

0:26:070:26:10

The dead began to pile up in the river.

0:26:130:26:16

The retreating Lancastrians were forced to clamber over what

0:26:160:26:19

one chronicler called "bridges of bodies".

0:26:190:26:22

28,000 men were reported dead.

0:26:240:26:27

But Edward had won the crown of England.

0:26:290:26:32

When Edward IV died 22 years later,

0:26:380:26:42

his 12-year-old son was proclaimed Edward V.

0:26:420:26:46

But he was too young to take power and the new king's uncle,

0:26:470:26:52

Richard, saw an opportunity to win the crown for himself.

0:26:520:26:58

Richard placed Edward and his younger brother

0:26:580:27:01

in the Tower of London.

0:27:010:27:02

They were never seen again.

0:27:030:27:05

Richard III was crowned king,

0:27:070:27:10

but his suspected murder of the young princes caused outrage.

0:27:100:27:14

Lancastrians and some Yorkists now chose to back Henry Tudor,

0:27:160:27:21

a man with a flimsy claim to the English throne.

0:27:210:27:25

Henry had been living in exile

0:27:260:27:28

and had won the support of the French king.

0:27:280:27:31

He landed in Wales with thousands of French troops

0:27:320:27:36

and marched east, gathering support along the way.

0:27:360:27:39

Richard and Henry's armies clashed here near Bosworth

0:27:410:27:45

in Leicestershire.

0:27:450:27:47

Richard's army was far superior in numbers,

0:27:520:27:55

but the loyalty of his men was in doubt.

0:27:550:27:57

At first, they seemed to be fighting half-heartedly.

0:27:590:28:03

But then Richard saw an opportunity to bring the battle to a swift end.

0:28:030:28:08

Richard caught sight of Henry Tudor surrounded by only a small retinue

0:28:100:28:15

and he charged directly at him with a few loyal knights.

0:28:150:28:18

One of his most powerful nobles, Lord Stanley,

0:28:210:28:24

was watching the battle unfold.

0:28:240:28:26

He commanded up to 5,000 men but his allegiance was in doubt.

0:28:280:28:33

When he saw Richard isolated and vulnerable, he chose to back

0:28:340:28:39

the Tudors and unleashed his troops upon the Plantagenet king.

0:28:390:28:45

The king was abandoned but he chose not to flee.

0:28:460:28:50

The last Plantagenet monarch was cut down by a lethal blow to the head.

0:28:500:28:54

His corpse was stripped naked and paraded along the road to Leicester,

0:28:560:29:02

where Richard was buried in a hastily-dug grave.

0:29:020:29:06

The crown he wore into battle was discovered in the carnage

0:29:060:29:11

at Bosworth, and placed upon the head of the new king - Henry Tudor.

0:29:110:29:15

The Plantagenets, who had dominated England for 331 years,

0:29:170:29:22

fell into oblivion.

0:29:220:29:24

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